Lion's Landing Scenario
Today we are taking a look at another one of the new scenarios in Patch 5.1, Lion's Landing. This is an Alliance only scenario.

Boss Pull Counts
WoWProgress added a nice new feature, boss pull counts! It shows how many times players attempted a boss.

Arena Exploitation and Win Trading

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Providing an environment where players can compete in the spirit of fair play is extremely important to us, particularly in rated Player versus Player combat. As part of that commitment we regularly monitor gameplay, and have discovered an issue where some Arena teams have exploited the queuing system to obtain high team ratings, “dodge” unfavorable team compositions, and engage in win trading.

These, and all, exploitative activities are absolutely prohibited. We will investigate the situation carefully, and players that have been found to have participated in exploitation will be subject to the appropriate actions against their World of Warcraft accounts and characters, including:

Arena team deletion

Character MMR reset to 1500

All Conquest gear removed

Conquest earned tally reset, as well as all Honor and Conquest points removed.

All Arena achievements earned since the beginning of Mists of Pandaria removed.

3 day suspension

In addition to the measures already discussed, as a result of the rating inflation that occurred due to the exploitative activity, all Team Ratings and MMR above 2200 will be reset to 2200 during the upcoming maintenance.

Please note: Conquest Point caps should not be affected by this reset. Point Caps will return to the appropriate levels relative to rating the following week.

Does that include RBG ratings? A quick answer would be appreciated as queuing hangs in the balance!
It doesn't include Rated Battlegrounds at this time, and this is primarily aimed at the recognized Arena issue.

We're looking into RBGs though.

I think this change is geared towards people who weren't intentionally exploiting, but gained rating off of exploiters.
Correct!

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Arena Ranking ImprovementsYou know, when they said more active teams would benefit from playing more often and how they said they would energize ladder teams etc etc
The new system should be arriving in patch 5.1. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hide Shoulders OptionBlizzard has stated in no uncertain terms that hiding shoulders isn't something they'd consider.
That's not entirely accurate. It's true that offering an option to hide shoulders is something we've been reluctant to do, because so much effort goes into the creation of shoulder art, and those items are some of the most visually distinctive and iconic items in World of Warcraft. It's not necessarily totally off of the table though. As we've said often in the past, we still plan to grow and evolve the Transmogrification feature over time.

Well, to be fair Blizz open the door to this when they allowed us to hide our helmets...that makes less sense than hiding shoulders
One could make that argument, but opting to show a character's face is a choice we've offered for quite a long time. It's sort of its own thing; especially considering that there is quite a lot of art and animation specifically for character heads and faces, and customization of those features is a significant part of making your character your own. Allowing faces to be displayed makes sense in that context. While armor doesn't necessarily look terrible without shoulders, I don't think that making exposed shoulders interesting has been high on the priorities when designing chest armor textures/models over time.

how about having the artist team making a complete set that looks good for a change?
Art is an extremely subjective thing. With very rare exceptions, if you take any random piece of armor or art, and ask people for opinions, they'll almost certainly be divided.

For example, I uh, never really liked any of the AQ40 stuff (scandalous!). I know people that love it so much they have it 'mogged to this day. *shrug* (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Listening to Feedback
I've seen the following statement I made quoted a few times:

Your guess is spot on. We are constantly gathering and analyzing information on gameplay. Raw data is tremendously useful, but it doesn't really offer context, which is why other sources of information are essential.
The responses it has received suggest that the responders didn't read the most important part of that statement, though:

Raw data is tremendously useful, but it doesn't really offer context, which is why other sources of information are essential.
We know that raw data doesn't give us the whole story regarding why players are doing one thing or another in-game - we're always trying to fill in the context behind why players make the choices that they do. It's not enough to know that an activity or feature is popular, it's important to try to understand why.

Any ETA on CRZ fixes? Not troling/whatever but i am interested when all the bugs are going to be worked out. Good Luck all!
No specific ETAs, but there are some changes coming in 5.1 that may help address some of the issues with the timing of holiday events, confusion over realm time zone changes, and the like. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

8th Anniversary Letterbut still nothing about the awkward mail we received.
That was indeed a bug, and it does not appear that it can be hotfixed.

Suffice it to say that we're not happy about that, but we are happy that you guys have all joined us for the 8th Anniversary of World of Warcraft. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

1v1 Arenas
While in theory this sounds fun, the game just isn’t balanced around 1v1, not even 2v2, 3v3 is probably the most balanced bracket.
With 1v1, you could have fights that could last indefinitely, specs that wouldn’t work, everyone would probably have to switch to damage dealing specs or tanking specs (imagine double healers facing each other).

As you probably know 2v2 already has some restrictions when it comes to the rewards you can get from it exactly for the very same reason, so I wouldn’t expect 1v1 anytime soon.

But thanks for the suggestion, I do understand where this comes from, it's fun to duel, it really is, but that's why we have the duel option, but we must recognize that duelling has no place in Arenas as the game works right now, this doesn't mean that it will never happen, just that we don't currently have any plans for it, if one day we do, I’m sure that will only happen if circumstances change drastically and somehow we manage to balance PvP across all brackets with a radical new approach to it.

I know this is especially bothersome to those of you who really enjoy playing alone and prefer the 1on1 competitiveness of PvP, just like some people prefer to only do 1vs1 in RTS games, I know that some players are so competitive that when you win, you want to know that it was 100% because of you and only you and not because of your teammate, it’s nice to have total control over the fight, I get that, but still we can't put 1v1 in arenas unless we feel it’s equivalent to all the other brackets, and as I said, at the moment we don’t even feel 2v2 is equivalent to 3v3 or 5v5. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

World of Warcraft’s 8th Anniversary Video

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

World of Warcraft turns eight on November 23, 2012! Another epic year has flown by, and we’d like to thank you all for joining us on so many great adventures. To celebrate, players who log into the game between the dates of November, 18 through December, 1 will receive a feat of strength added to their Achievements and a “Celebration Package” item. Using your item will kick off the celebrations by shooting off fireworks*, applying a (visual only) tabard to your character, and granting an 8% bonus to experience and reputation gains from any enemies defeated while active.

For an extra bonus this year we’ve put together a little video to take you through the years from the original release of World of Warcraft to the newly revealed shores of the Mists of Pandaria. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey. We know we have.

We look forward to another year of adventures ahead and many more to come!

*Use fireworks responsibly. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. If fireworks get in eyes, rinse in muddy pond water for 20 minutes, /dance, and contact your nearest Mistweaver, Priest, Shaman, Druid, or Paladin.

Curse Weekly Roundup
In this week's roundup: Call of Duty Black Ops 2 rakes in cash, Minecraft Updates and Minecon, League of Legends gets a face lift and a new champion, Rift Storm Legion is out, and this week's Game Forecast.

"8th Anniversary Letter
but still nothing about the awkward mail we received.
That was indeed a bug, and it does not appear that it can be hotfixed.

Suffice it to say that we're not happy about that, but we are happy that you guys have all joined us for the 8th Anniversary of World of Warcraft."

So, how can that be a bug? It's just a simple changing of text. Also, why not have a blue at least make a forum post with what the letter should have said this year. that would be a nice way of making it up to the people who care.

So those 2 are diddling her....I can't begin to care. WoW is back on the back burner, thanks for paying....5.1 ya it's coming. Swallow that shit and keep paying you tards. Least, that's what I heard. I guess it's off to somewhere else, though I don't honestly know where that might be. Guess I'll learn Spanish.

A "retrospective video" just to show off all the content they designed with planned obsolescence and threw away, stepping over the shards to keep tossing new shinies at the ADD kids? The hell with that. The only reason I keep watching news for this piss-poor company is hoping they some day get a grip on things and adopt an "all content is worthwhile content" attitude like GW2 has, but so far, I don't see even a glimmer of hope.